When I was 8 years old, my dad received a call from a friend in East Berlin. She told him that something huge was about to happen and asked if he wanted to come witness this. I’m quite sure my dad knew what a big impact this extraordinary event could have on the world. Despite some fears over his own safety, he decided to go. I remember him coming home with a piece of the Berlin wall.
Just passing by for now
A few years later my parents made the brave choice to go visit friends in Warsaw and to bring me and my 2 sisters – the three of us between the ages of 8 and 13. We travelled there by overnight train. The train journey was long but lovely. The only tense part was crossing the border into Poland. That was a few hours after we had passed by Berlin. There were a few passport checks there too but it was much smoother than crossing the Germany-Poland border.
From the train Berlin still looked very messy but you could tell that it was a place ready to develop into a major city. I knew I would be back at some point in my life. What I didn’t know is that it was going to change and shape my life forever.
Last-minute go ahead
By June of the year 2000, I had chosen my Erasmus exchange city to be Berlin. I didn’t have to think twice about the decision. No-one else from my class chose Berlin, very much to my surprise. Unfortunately, the opportunity for me to even go on exchange was hanging in the balance after I failed quite a few subjects. Most of my summer was spent preparing the exams resits at the end of August.
The experience felt strange: the university college wasn’t a very big one and not a lot of students had to resit exams. Moreover, it was mostly the same students who I ran into in that lovely, sunny week at the end of August. The results came through by early September. I had passed and was allowed to go on exchange to Berlin, leaving the very next week.
Berlin – here I come
My dad dropped me off at Brussels train station where I took an overnight train to Berlin. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep the next night. I also didn’t have a mobile phone yet. On the train I explained my situation to a French couple who lived in Berlin, and they kindly offered for me to stay with them in case I didn’t have a place by the end of the day.
At the break of dawn, my train arrived at Zoologischer Garten station. I hopped on the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse. My university was just a short walk from that stop. I remember exactly where we had to register. It was at the back of the main building of the Humboldt-Universitaet. By the early afternoon, I had an address for a place to live. I had found a fellow Belgian exchange student who was assigned to a place not too far from me. We made our way on the U-Bahn and I kindly offered to walk her to her new home. For the next 6 months, I ran into her one single other time, we spoke very briefly on an underground train and that was it.
My U-Bahn stop was Bundestrasse and my street was called Ortrudstrasse – one of about 5 streets with flower names in the neighbourhood. It was a quiet, residential area of Berlin. I was greeted by a man in his late forties. He was very nice, showed me to my room, poured me some tea whilst we went through the paperwork, and that was that. I was settled in Berlin.
Before dinner time, I called my parents from a pay phone nearby reassuring them that I had a roof above my head for the night. As a parent myself now, I can very well imagine how anxious they must have felt until that phone call. That night, relief made my dinner at McDonalds near Zoologischer Garten taste surprisingly good.
This was just the start of an amazing 6 months – and more after that – in Berlin. Subscribe to my blog to read more about why Berlin means so much to me. I’ll post a follow up on this post soon.
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